On Thursday, the Miss American Organization came under fire after internal correspondence was leaked that allegedly revealed innapropriate conversations between CEO Sam Haskell, board members and pageant writers regarding contestants.
USA TODAY

Miss America CEO Sam Haskell is shown with Miss America 2018 Cara Mund after the pageant held in Atlantic City in September.(Photo: Thomas P. Costello)

When Brent Adams of Holly Springs began working for the Miss America Organization, he was excited about the doors it would open, and he rapidly gained responsibility. Before too long, he went from being fellow Mississippian and Miss America CEO Sam Haskell's assistant to being the organization's director of development in Los Angeles.

He would end up standing up against the leadership of the organization whose mission is to empower and promote women because he felt they had instead made it into all the things its detractors thought it was.

It should have been a dream for Miss America 2013 Mallory Hagan, too. She grew up in a small town in Alabama, and at age 19 moved to New York, determined to become Miss America one day. She became Miss New York 2012, and Miss America 2013. She would end up locked out of jobs and smeared by gossip.

"I started competing in the Miss America Organization the day that there was a teen version, at age 13, and I won when I was 24," she said. "So by the time I was Miss America, I had been in the program 11 years."

By multiple accounts, Hagan appeared to be one of Haskell's favorites. When Haskell found out that Hagan and Adams had begun dating after she had finished her reign as Miss America, things turned weird, both Hagan and Adams said.

Haskell, who many former employees of the MAO say is controlling and moody, had hoped that Adams would date his daughter, and it was the subject of many conversations between the two, Adams said.

“This afternoon, the Board of Directors of the Miss America Organization accepted the resignation of Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sam Haskell, effective immediately. The Board of Directors also accepted the resignation of Chairman Lynn Weidner. At the Board’s request, Ms. Weidner has agreed to remain on the Board for up to ninety days to facilitate a smooth transition for the MAO to new leadership.

"The Board thanks Lynn and Sam for many years of tireless work for, and significant financial support to, both the Miss America Organization and thousands of young women who received millions of dollars of educational scholarships from the Organization as a direct result of their efforts.”

Adams said the organization deserves better than the leadership has allowed it to be. He said he doesn't want to see these revelations destroy the organization, but instead it should be an opportunity to improve it and make it what it claims to be — an opportunity for women to be empowered. The resignation of Haskell, Randle, Weidner and Haddad is a beginning, he said.

“It’s time that these women who this organization is supposed to be about — it’s time that these former Miss Americas, contestants, volunteers, the people who have been putting in the real work — take back this organization from this misogynistic, narcissistic man who’s turned it into his own vanity project," Adams said. "He weaponized this nonprofit to destroy the careers and businesses and reputations of the very women that this was supposed to be empowering. It’s not just Sam. The entire board through their silence has been complicit in enabling this behavior to go on.”

Earlier this year after a discussion with Adams, Dick Clark productions severed ties with the Miss America Organization.

Hagan said Adams' willingness to step up is something that is rare and needs to be seen more often in the war against sexual discrimination and sexual harassment, as well as the bullying that goes along with it.

"Brent is a man who is standing up and saying, 'This can’t happen to women,' and there needs to be more of that," Hagan said. "I haven’t given him enough credit to this point, but we need more leaders like him and less like Sam."

Emails to and from Haskell referred to former Miss Americas as "c--ts," appeared to wish Miss America 1998 Kate Shindle was dead, and called Miss America 2013 Mallory Hagan "fat and gross," resulting in Haskell's suspension on Friday.

Randle issued a clarification and a statement to the Clarion Ledger on Saturday.

"I joined the MAO staff on March 23, 2015, as chief operating officer. In January 2015 — over two months before my employment began — I inappropriately responded to an email sent to my personal email account about a former Miss America. I apologize to Mallory for my lapse in judgment; it does not reflect my values or the values I worked to promote at The Miss America Organization.

"However, the article implies alleged complicit participation on my part in a years-long array of inappropriate email communication, which is grossly misleading. Furthermore, the most egregious emails were exchanged in 2013 and 2014 and pre-date my employment altogether.

"Over the past three years, I have dedicated my life to The Miss America Organization — furthering the goals and ideals of MAO for the benefit of the incredible young women participating in our national program. I am honored to have served, and I am exceedingly proud of the great work we have accomplished. Although this terrible situation was not caused or driven by me, in light of recent events and new developments, I am no longer willing to continue in my capacity as President and earlier today offered my resignation to the MAO Board of Directors.”

Haskell's only comment to the Clarion Ledger Saturday is that his statement made on Friday stands.

"I was under stress from a full year of attacks by two Miss Americas, and while I don't ever want to offer an excuse, I do want to offer context," says Haskell. "This was not the CEO of an organization laughing at inappropriate jokes and speaking about a former Miss America in email conversations. This was a father whose family was being attacked, and a man whose character was being assassinated daily, which impaired my judgment when responding to the inappropriate emails sent to me about them. For that, I deeply apologize."

Hagan holds that she did question Haskell's leadership, but she never attacked him personally.

Haskell also has displayed a disdain for other women who he may have believed stepped out of line when it came to agreeing with his governance of the Miss America Organization, such as Miss America 1998 Kate Schindle and Miss America 1989 Gretchen Carlson.

"Any person who’s a real leader would go, 'Well something I’m doing isn’t working for this brand.' Any real leader would go, 'What can I do better so we’re serving the industry?'" Hagan said. "Sam's leadership basically means you stand up and say what you want and if people don’t agree with you then they’re out."

In an exchange from August 2014, Haskell forwarded an email that said Hagan’s hairdresser had been commenting on Hagan’s sex life, as well as her recent weight gain to Miss America telecast lead writer Lewis Friedman and noted, “not a single day passes that I am not told some horrible story about Mallory.”

“Mallory’s preparing for her new career … as a blimp in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade," Friedman replied.

"As she continues to destroy her own credibility, her voice will attract less and less notice while she continues her descent to an unhappy pathetic footnote,” he continued.

“P.S. Are we four the only ones not to have (slept with) Mallory?” Friedman wrote, to which Haskell replied, “It appears we are the only ones!”

But by multiple accounts, such innuendos were baseless. From the time Adams and Hagan began to date, Haskell appears to have turned up a smear campaign that started with attempting to convince Adams that she was "trash," and that he needed to be with someone "with class and money like my daughter."

Adams said there was a time Haskell was angry with him for not being willing to break up with Hagan for his daughter, and he said, "All of this can be yours."

He was referring to his mansion and his money. But that's not what Adams was looking for. He said in Hagan, he didn't see someone who was Miss America because of her beauty, he saw someone smart and ambitious and kind. He said there was one particular thing that made her stand out to him in a world full of beautiful, smart, ambitious women: Her heart.

“The most attractive thing about her is her empathy for other people," Adams said of Hagan. "And that’s what made it so hard to watch Sam malign her every day that I went to work after she fell out of favor.”

In another exchange, Haskell, Randle, Haddad, Weidner and Friedman exchanged emails about a photo of Hagan, calling her "healthy" and "unrecognizable," and questioning why Adams would want her.

When Hagan went on to begin work as an interview coach for pageant contestants, the Miss America Organization basically made rules so that contestants were not allowed to use her as their coach, she said, adding that some people were reportedly told they couldn't be in pictures with her.

And Hagan said there were things that happened that she couldn't quite prove, like when she let the Miss Alabama pageant know two weeks ahead of time that she was coming, and then she bought her own ticket, and was never identified as a former Miss America, which is a very common practice at state-level pageants.

"It’s all so orchestrated but there's not enough to prove it. It’s this overwhelming feeling of being targeted by a whole organization," she said. "For the longest time I’ve been trying to tell people, 'He’s lying about me ...' To see it in black and white has been very vindicating."

On Friday the Miss America Organization told USA TODAY the board of directors was "immediately forming an investigative committee and retaining independent legal counsel to conduct a full investigation of the matter."

As of Friday, the revelation had brought out 49 Miss Americas to petition for Haskell and others to be fired.

"I think this feels better than the day that I won," Hagan said. "Not because I’m celebrating someone else’s downfall, but because this is more of a testament to who I am than just winning Miss America. That’s a crap shoot, it’s objective, there might be 10 of us on a given year that can do that."

Hagan is now an anchor at WLTZ in Alabama. She said there was great loss leading up to her going home and starting over, but that she still has aspirations.

"When I started competing and I had no idea what I was doing and I was going into this thing blind, and who would have thought I would have ended up winning?" Hagan said. "So if I have to start at the bottom, learning and growing, who knows where I will be in 11 years? If I put my mind to something and I work hard and am consistent and persevere, there’s literally no other goal I can't achieve."

Adams, until recently, worked at the prestigious Juilliard School. He and Hagan remain friends, though they are no longer romantically involved.

It is unclear what Haskell's next step will be.

Haskell became known as "the agent to the stars" at the William Morris agency from 1978 to 2004, with his clients including George Clooney, Whoopi Goldberg, Dolly Parton and Bill Cosby.

Haskell helped raise more than $30 million for the Mississippi Hurricane Recovery Fund with his Mississippi Rising benefit concert at Ole Miss following Katrina in 2005.